DowntownCoruscant

I thought about putting this in the Richmond sports thread, but it might not even be on topic there…. Miami Marlins radio broadcaster Dave Van Horne announced his retirement. His career started in 1966 with the Richmond Braves. Before that, he was a drama student at RPI. Hence, the RVA connection. Vam Horne has had himself quite a career. He won the Ford Frick Award for broadcasters a few years back; that means he’s a Hall of Famer, kinda (recipients don’t have plaques in the plaque room so they’re not really HOFers, but no matter). He’s been with the Marlins 20 or so years; before that, he was an announcer for the Montreal Expos from their inception in 1969, most notably teaming with Duke Snider for a few years. He left the Expos during their “let’s run this thing into the ground” final days. (The Expos soon thereafter became the Washington Nationals. Although my son and I are huge Nats fans, I’ve always felt badly for Expos fans.) For Van Horne’s last year with the Expos, they didn’t have a TV or radio contract, so he broadcast over the internet. But that was before MLB had a uniform TV and radio streaming service, so who really knows how many people listened. The Marlins also are a notoriously cheap organization, but they did win the World Series in 2003, so I would imagine getting the chance to call that was a career highlight. Richmond has a rich history of broadcasters (sports or otherwise). Van Horne is not one of the more well-known broadcasters with a Richmond connection, but he is highly accomplished.

Thursday evening, my wife and I caught the virtual meeting for the Staples Mill Study Area (stretching from Hungary Rd. to the I-64 interchange, but not exclusively so: it also covers a bit of Broad and Brook). It was facilitated by a traffic engineering company with some VDOT people on hand too. About 50 people watched it. The gist is to identify problems with this area and propose long-term solutions with a eye toward multi-modal transportation. The most glaring issues right now are traffic and safe pedestrian/bike access - the existing sidewalks are unsafe due to being so close to a high speed roadway. The presenter showed a map projecting there will be dozens of “red” intersections in this area by 2040 under a no-build scenario. Red is roughly translated as “this is hell.” So, they will look into various fixes from signal timing to infrastructure changes. The presenter somewhat vaguely referred to dedicated travel lanes along Staples Mill. I don’t know what she meant by that. Although one of the goals is to provide safe and affordable transit for people working in this area or providing a connection to jobs in downtown or Short Pump, she also said the Pulse will not have a Staples Mill spoke. Interestingly, one of the goals of this study is to foster TOD around the Staples Mill Amtrak station. This portion was also vague, but the presenter did say the long term vision was for the station to be in close proximity to its current location. This comment, along with another one saying a goal is to reduce the sea of surface parking lots in the study area, suggests to me that everything around the current station may be redeveloped into a more efficient model. This was a preliminary meeting. A second will follow in the summer. There’s also an online survey that remains open through next week.

Fun fact: My late mother in law touched the top of it (when it was laid out on the ground before being erected).

80 stories? I Miss RVA would want to go higher!!!

Yeah, I hit quote on the wrong post. ::smacks head::

Well, there’s already 2 planned for Willow Lawn, but what I’d love to see some of that sea of parking turned into something at least the 5100’s height. Pipe dream, I know.

Should I become a multi billionaire, one of the billions will go to exactly that.

Re the Manchester Bridge, my understanding is a condition of the Richmond-Manchester merger was that there would always been a free pedestrian bridge linking the two. Assuming such a requirement is still enforceable, would the Potterfield Bridge suffice? In that event, the Pulse could run down the center without taking up any travel lanes. Also, I’m curious about ridership per station. I seem to recall early reports saying Willow Lawn’s numbers dwarfed the others. That made sense given it’s the western terminus and given my experience (it’s within walking distance of my house). But I’m fascinated by the second VCU station idea. I’m not sure that makes sense from a design viewpoint, but I do believe the Pulse is popular with students. At any rate, all of this is a long way off and I’m very skeptical how effective a N/S route would be within the downtown core because things are already very tight.

Loud and clear, Papa. I went to my share of condo board meetings before my wife and I sold. I have NO desire to go to another.

My one hesitation here is that the area is well trafficked by kids walking/biking to Mary Mumford. But it doesn’t seem like these plans should disrupt that too much.

Well said.

My understanding- and I could very well be wrong- is that this piece hasn’t been appropriated yet.

And RFI seems (at least to me) like a waste management company. Maybe that’s BFI?

I was born just a little too late to enjoy the Robins or Squires, so I love hearing stories like that.

death, taxes, i miss rva pining for ludicrously tall

Yeah, one thing to keep in mind (take solace from) is that the massive parking lot is just plain outmoded. I don’t know how robust the deck(s) will be, but wide swaths of real estate taken up by a sprawling surface lotis not going to happen.

Richmond 300 looks super but is aspirational. A new Diamond is a practical reality-or at least the need for one is. There are many factors that make AA Blvd a better location for it than Hermitage. Better this gets done than potentially nothing. Edited to add: The RTD story notes there’s a 3:00 p.m. deadline on the due date. Who on earth makes something due at 3:00 p.m.? Why not 5:00 p.m. or as is increasingly common in these days of electronic submissions, 11:59 p.m.? A small detail, but it strikes me as so very odd.

That’s downright timely for RVA. They deserve half a golf-clap just for meeting their self-imposed timeline.

{whispers} I actually prefer the ballpark on AA Blvd and was pretty bummed it was going to go on the Hermitage side.

Not for nothing, but I’ve always found it weird that 85 just stops in Petersburg. It could’ve veered west and acted much like the western bypass that 288 is, or else it could’ve decked with 95 thru the city and carried on much as 301 does now as a Potomac bypass. I know Interstate highways only go as far as they’re funded, or less than that if community opposition is strong enough, but this one’s always been weird.

I do believe so.

Those are awesome photos, I Miss RVA. Monroe’s highest and best use going forward is as a storage facility. Keep the height and presumably the structure could withstand the weight of a few boxes. Extra Space Storage could brand it Tons of Extra Space Storage.

Although hitting 500 would’ve been very cool, I can live with this. But there should be a moratorium on the above sea level thing because that’s junk.

Doesn’t that cut both ways, though? Who’s going to want to buy the thing and pay the cost of gutting it and repurposing it when the location sucks? What if the choice is parking deck or “vacant and in a state of disrepair “? Keep in mind I don’t know how any of this actually works and have yet to meet anyone who actually likes the building, although that doesn’t by any stretch means there’s no one willing to pay who thinks it has potential, especially if the state as is motivated a seller as it seems.

It’s a really strange disconnect, isn’t it? Normally I’d be all aboard the Occam’s Razor point and simply accept the CoStar announcement. I mean, that’s the best evidence of height, right? But neither the RTD nor RBS has corrected this yet, there’s been plenty of time to do so, and some here are starting to convince me that something got lost in the mix and announced an older version. Unlikely but possible. (Either way, CoStar’s conditional boast about having the state’s tallest if Monroe gets dumped was weird.)